Part retail whore, part corporate loose cannon, Kanye is hip-hop's most complete package since Lauryn Hill. In the '06 please continue to stand up for a cause other than caviar wishes and champagne dreams.

Tracy E. Hopkins Brooklyn, New York

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Kanye West is hip-hop's textbook example of a reduced black public intellectual and that's why the media worships him. He produces an album by longtime homophobe Common in the same year he admonishes hip-hop homophobia on MTV. Then he lambastes George W. for dropping the ball on Katrina, but leaves it to the Legendary K.O. to show what a genius Kanye could be if he actually had an ideological platform.

Jason King Manhattan

Kanye cared about black people, making room for Jamie Foxx, Common, Black Person Extraordinaire Jay-Z, his grandpa, and ever-more-obscure samples. Late Registration also found the space to piss off remaining rockists with the most determinedly iconoclastic move since Stevie Wonder indentured Jeff Beck: Kanye hired Adam Levine to inject the soul some think he's too smug to do himself.

Alfred Soto Miami, Florida

It was something to see how nervous and agitated West was as he forced himself to say what he wanted to say; it felt like the only such instance since Sinéad O'Connor's SNL debacle where a pop star had actually departed from the script for a vertiginous leap into no-man's-land.

Phil Dellio Toronto, Ontario

I have no doubt we will feel very progressive while giving record of the year to "the Fiona Apple of hip-hop" Kanye West for the 38th best disc of 2005 because it's exactly what we're allowed to vote for while still obeying the rule of I'm-a-genius-and-here's-my-record (which is basically all Kanye has ever said with one important exception before he went back to being an absolute prick, which is neither here nor there he just didn't make half as many great songs as Jazze Pha).

Joshua Clover Davis, California

Something I didn't see anybody else pick up on in Late Registration was easily one of the most fascinating things about the album: Kanye's "Crack Music" slam on the Game. Dude got his verse cut, his huffy flow mimicked for the hook, his true-to-name vacuousness mercilessly parodied, and he didn't even realize it.

Nick Sylvester Manhattan

View Late Registration as a rap record and it's something of a letdown. Treat it as a pop album, though, and the expansive melodies and grooves deliver on its outsize ambition, much as visionary records by Curtis, Marvin, and Stevie did in the '70s.

Bill Friskics-Warren Nashville, Tennessee

What would Kanye West's album sound like if he were about to be imprisoned for a year?

Nick Catucci Brooklyn, New York

The most interesting thing about 50 is that like voodoo's Baron Samedi he's the laughing face of death incarnate, a zombie incubus with a sardonic overbite who really did destroy his enemies Supreme and Murder Inc. with the most laconic of spells, chants, and verses.

Greg Tate Manhattan

Toward the fall, 50 Cent started prefacing his raps with an introduction: "It's 50." What, for the three or maybe four people in the entire universe who still don't know who the hell you are? Perhaps you meant studio temperature"It's 50 [degrees Fahrenheit]"or your lunch order"It's 50 [sandwiches]" ?

Nick Sylvester Manhattan

Insert R. Kelly joke here. Or don't. Because in "Trapped in the Closet" he creates a hermetic moral space where he and only he gets to pass judgment. When the world is trying to keep you down there's only one thing to do: make your own world, one where you're God and everyone elsethe players, the haters, the people comparing you to Wesley Willisare perverts just sharing it with you.

Jon Dolan Brooklyn, New York

No neo-soul singer wears the idiom's quavering falsetto with more credibility, or conviction, than this most troubled of soul men, with the words to matchand the showmanship.

Michael Freedberg Salem, Massachusetts

R. Kelly's Kloset Kollection provided the year's creepiest and most entertaining attempt at resurrecting the modern musical and, not incidentally, seemed to ask for a little understanding. After all, aren't we all creatures of libido trapped in our own soap operas? That the escapades of a bisexual preacher and company are nowhere near as freaky as Kelly's own piss-drenched, underage Narnia seems to have escaped him.

John Seroff Jersey City, New Jersey

Can someone tell R. Kelly that opera is often sung by more than one person? It really streamlines all the "and then she said" bullshit.

R. KellySometimes I am all the way "fuck that dude," and change the station. Sometimes I listen with a curious mix of horror and awe. Sometimes, sometimes I go there: I know the words, and I sing along. Confliction is a weight-bearing exercise, fundamental to third-wave feminism and pop criticism.

Jessica Hopper Chicago, Illinois

Who cares if the lyrics advocate pussy beatingthe track is bangin'. Who cares if the track is bangin'it advocates pussy beating.

Kevin John Austin, Texas

"Growin' up I was confused, my momma kissin' a girl." Wait, what? So 50's best lines this year weren't about his dick, or Nas, but about walking in on his mom kissing another woman?

Jessica Suarez Brooklyn, New York

Kanye was there for me when 50 Cent wasn't, and for that, "Gold Digger" has replaced "In Da Club" as my ironic dance song of choice.

Trish Bendix Chicago, Illinois

The big attraction of Ludacris's "Pimpin' All Over the World" for me is a pit stop in Toronto, alerting the rest of the world to something I've been telling everyone for years: the pimpin' here is top-notch, absolutely first-rate.

You know a song is nasty when it has sex terminology you don't understand. How exactly do you "throw it like a boomerang"? I think I need to learn to throw it like a Frisbee first and then maybe I can step my game up to Foxy Brown's level.

Jalylah Burrell Manhattan

Mariah Carey's transformation into the best hip-hop artist with eight-octave vocal range is complete.

Dimitry Elias Léger Yvoire, France

Minimal beats were everything this yearword to top iTunes download "Laffy Taffy" but Young Jeezy specialized in minimal raps. That is, he said a lot with very little. He stole a track with a mere exhortation of "yeeeeeaaaaahhhhh." He bypassed Jay's paradigm of pared-down elegance as if there was no reason to try in the first place.

Jon Caramanica Manhattan

Inanga chuchotee is a Burundi genre where a musician whispers over the unstable timbres and noisy frequencies of an indigenous zither. It fucks with concepts of figure and ground, melody and harmony, human and machine. "Wait (The Whisper Song)" is just as mindfucking, apotheosizing the twisted perceptual games of so much hip-hop. The white noise of the whisper elicits a filtering process that foregrounds the lyrics, but at the slightest remove the lyrics fade back into the music.

Kevin John Austin, Texas

With mannered vocals and chivalrous lyrics floating over Scott Storch's dewy production, Mario's "Let Me Love You" was the blueprint for sentimental, earnest r&b in 2005. It would have made my list had radio, video, and karaoke bars everywhere not squeezed the pulp out of it, turning it into the most relentlessly overplayed ballad since "I Just Called to Say I Love You."

Jason King Manhattan

Four or so basic chords anchor "Ordinary People," but its true genius lies in the lyric, the melody, and the "take it slow" motif reprised in the piano accompaniment. In poorly constructed songs, the bridge is where most people tune out. But in great songs, it's where something unexplainable happens. John Legend uses the bridge to "go to a place only lovers go," and he does it with an ordinary 4-5-1 chord progression, a stair-step, pitter-patter melody, and a long list of maybes.

Makkada Selah Manhattan

"Hate It or Love It" 's horn-drenched, sepia- tone double-team is so slick and glossy that neither the music nor the lyrics stick to the ribs no matter how many sips you take, forcing continual imbibing yet leaving you thirsty for more. Try to hum the hook, to spit the rhymes; you can't, even though you gave this song 1,000 spins this year. Capitalist brilliance.

Ray Cummings York, Pennsylvania

The Game has the best name of any new rapper since Black Thought. "Game" is one of those great, rich, layered pieces of Black English with several meanings, like "hustle" or "soul." Used in a phrase like "don't hate the player, hate the game," it takes on a meaning somewhat similar to what "the matrix" meant in the classic filmthe world that surrounds us, impacts us, and controls us. In calling himself the Game, Jayceon Taylor has said, "I'm bigger than everyone else. I'm not a player, I'm larger than a player."

Touré Brooklyn, New York

A famous conversation with the rapper the Game: Me: What's your favorite game?

The Game: I'm my favorite game.

Another famous conversation with the rapper the Game: Me: Do you have a game face?

I want to say that all reggaetón sounds the same, because it's entirely true, but I fear reggaetón fans saying the same about rock music, which is also sorta true.

Nick Sylvester Manhattan

Black Rock Coalition, 20 years in the game. Recognize, bee-yotch!

Darrell McNeill Brooklyn, New York

Best 2002-style garage rock: 50 Cent and Mobb Deep's "Have a Party."

Rob Sheffield Brooklyn, New York

Rap music has slipped through New York's snow-numb fingers. Apart from 50 Cent, and he doesn't count for reasons of mercenary approach to pop, no rap record of national significance came from the five boroughs this year. Juelz and Jim Jones might complain, but Dip Set is about as relevant on Houston's north side as Neil Diamond. AZ is old. Papoose? Maino? They might as well be from Dutchess County. We've been reduced to the category us hard-liners used to viciously malignregional rap. Everywhere else, they're pointing and making fun.

Jon Caramanica Manhattan

E-40 raps too fast, Keak da Sneak is too gravelly, and Federation were unable to dumb things down to a Lil Jon level, so hy phy remains the Bay's best secret.

Pete Babb Oakland, California

The year in trap rap: A bunch of grown adults are genuinely impressed by drug dealer talk. Post-collegiate bloggers argue over what's the funniest way to say "I sell drugs."

Chris Weingarten Manhattan

Young Jeezy's mixtapes were better than his album. This should not be up for debate.

Kris Ex Brooklyn, New York

Was I dreaming or did Young Jeezy really reach back to Reconstruction slang and rhyme "fag hag" with "scalawag"?

Eric Weisbard Seattle, Washington

I could see Foxy Brown struggling to keep her spirits up and winning the battle only some of the time. The human drama of her ordeal couldn't be hidden. Where rock, jazz, and soul make room for emotionally damaged people, hip-hop prefers its stars to be infallible pillars of strength and cool. But the suddenly deaf 26-year-old Inga Marchand from Brooklyn, who I could interview only by passing written notes, proved that no matter how hard we pretend to be, we're all fragile. Neither bulletproof vest nor bulletproof attitude can stop God's bullets.

Touré Brooklyn, New York

I believe hip-hop will continue to inspire imaginations around the globe and fuel the desire to create better worlds. I don't maintain as much faith that the music will do that imagining for us.

Oliver Wang San Francisco, California

Not since the English Beat's "Stand Down Margaret" has such an explicitly political tirade moved as fearlessly and effortlessly as "George Bush Doesn't Care About Black People." There are always fearless ones; it's the effortless part that's tricky.

Scott Woods Toronto, Ontario

Don't expect to see 4th25's Live From Iraq touted by Fox News. Don't expect it to be championed by Air America, either. The U.S. soldiers who recorded this rap album in Baghdad unleash their bile equally against insurgents, politicians, generals, gangsta posers, and indifferent Americans. They make no bones about the fact they'd rather take the chance of shooting an innocent civilian than get killed by a suicide bomber.

Ron Warnick Tulsa, Oklahoma

The most shocking thing about Kanye's "George Bush doesn't care about black people" is that it was actual political commentary spoken by a prominent hip-hop performer. The silence from the rest of the community typified hip-hop's current strategy: act all tough, but for the love of god, don't dare piss off anybody.

Tim Grierson Los Angeles, California

Hip-hop's moral apathy has been a long-term affair; it just took the events of 2005 to put it all into stark relief. Was this inevitable once hip-hop muscled its way into the mainstream? How does one chant down Babylon when you've helped renovate it?

Oliver Wang San Francisco, California

The ceremonial African war-dance art form called krumpin or clownin, the freestyle rendered unto possession and ghetto guerrilla combat represented so tragically in David LaChapelle's Rize, proves the part of hip-hop that's about catching the spirit is still being nurtured somewhere in South Central. It won't save hip-hop; it won't even save those kids. But it reminds us all of whence we came.